Oldfield Earns $1K a Week

This content was lifted from the Barney Oldfield scrapbook. Like most of the material from that source, the name of the newspaper that originally published it, as well as the date, was snipped from the clipping. The main article is very hard to read because the quality of the photocopy of this 100 year-plus newsprint article was poor. It was printed sometime in the first half of the 1906 because the subject is Oldfield's involvement with the Broadway stage play, "The Vanderbilt Cup," starring then 17-year-old Elsie Janis. This artilce is quite brief, but provides a synopsis of the plot of the play. Apparently, the play was in production off Broadway at the time of publication of this article. My best guess is that the troupe was appearing in Hartford, Connecticut.
 
Barney Oldfield played an interesting role in the production. Together with long-time partner Tom Cooper (who was killed in a New York traffic accident later that same year, 1906) he devised a "special effect," racing his Green Dragon and Blue Streak race cars on treadmills on stage. Oldfield and Cooper appeared on stage as the drivers of the cars in the Vanderbilt Cup. For his efforts, Oldfield was paid $1,000 a week. I would like to know if this was Barney's share, or, as I suspect, money that he split with Tom and a portion of it also covered the cost of their contributions to the play's infrastructure.
 
There is a sceond article that is incomplete, but has a couple of interesting points. Oldfield was in Atlanta with his Green Dragon and was actively promoting the races he planned to appear at. This included an automobile parade with "most of the automobiles in Atlanta," many decorated with Japanese lamps.